When the Russian winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, Dmitry Muratov, in an interview with the BBCwarns of his country’s imminent use of nuclear weapons, many in the West will at least feel a pang of fear — followed by the thought: Let’s not provoke Vladimir Putin too much with further military aid Ukraine.
That is exactly what the Russian president would have us think – although Muratov is anything but a supporter of Putin: the independent newspaper he founded and edited, Novaya Gazeta, has been shut down by the Kremlin.
Muratov told the BBC’s Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg: “Two generations have lived without the threat of nuclear war. But this period is over. Will Putin press the nuclear button or not? Who knows? Nobody knows this.’
He then pointed out how Russia’s “state propaganda prepares people to think that nuclear war is not a bad thing.” TV channels here promote nuclear war and nuclear weapons as if they were advertising pet food. . . so that the people here are ready.’
It’s true that Russian TV shows on the war in Ukraine are full of pundits almost drooling over the prospect of “destroying” Britain with nuclear strikes in retaliation for our steadfast military support for the Ukrainians – against a studio backdrop of mushroom clouds over London.
many in the West will at least feel a pang of fear – followed by the thought: Let’s not provoke Vladimir Putin (pictured) too much with further military aid to Ukraine.
Muratov told the BBC’s Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg: ‘Two generations have lived without the threat of nuclear war. But this period is over. Will Putin press the nuclear button or not? Who knows? Nobody knows this.’ Pictured: Russian Yars rocket launch in October 2022
SURVIVAL
Then, last week, Putin announced that Russia would build a tactical nuclear weapons facility in Belarus, accompanied by a warning from that allied country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, that if Russia felt its survival was threatened by the way in which If the West had funneled weapons to Ukraine, Moscow could use “the most terrible weapon.”
That these statements followed Putin’s warning that Russia would “respond accordingly” after the UK announced it would supply Kiev Challenger 2 depleted uranium tank shells has led some to suggest that London is provoking a dangerous nuclear escalation.
In fact, as Putin knows, such ammunition is also used by Russia and has nothing to do with nuclear warfare.
And in a later statement, the Russian president pointed out that the transfer of nuclear weapons to Belarus was part of an existing plan “out of context” of the British supply of depleted uranium shells to Ukraine.
More pertinently, the construction of the facilities that Putin says will be built in Belarus will take years — and there is no sign of a start.
In other words, while Putin has repeatedly tried to use the threat of nuclear war as a deterrent against the West, as our governments consider how to respond to Ukraine’s request for the weapons they need, our media must be careful not to not amplify the Kremlin’s threats. , or exaggerate their significance.
This point is well articulated in an article published last week by the Chatham House think tank entitled “Russian Nuclear Intimidation: How Russia Uses Nuclear Threats To Shape Western Responses to Aggression.”
The author, Keir Giles, who has worked in Russia for many years, notes: ‘Russia has had considerable success in limiting Western support for Ukraine through the use of threatening language around the possible use of nuclear weapons. Western leaders have explicitly justified their reluctance to provide vital military aid to Ukraine by citing Russian stories of uncontrollable escalation.
“This is a remarkable success for Russian information campaigns. . . It is essential that responses to Russia’s intimidating rhetoric be guided by a realistic assessment of reality, rather than fear-induced paralysis.”
The truth is that whenever the West – by which in this context mainly means the US government – has overcome its nervousness about the supply of certain categories of weapons to Ukraine, the Kremlin’s response has not been to escalate, regardless of the previous threats .
So at the start of the war, Putin warned the West that if it were to interfere at all, “Russia’s reaction will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never experienced in your history” — adding, for the sake of from anyone who didn’t get this crude hint, that Russia is “one of the most powerful nuclear states.”
INVASION
But the West began to intervene on a hitherto unimaginable scale with the supply of weapons to Kiev: and Putin took no action against Washington or London, much less on a nuclear scale.
However, President Biden refused for months to supply Ukraine with the HIMARS long-range artillery system, likely because of Putin’s ominous threat that Russia would “attack new targets” if the US did.
But when Washington changed policy and said it would send these devastatingly accurate weapon systems to Kiev, Putin gave a sort of verbal shrug to the effect that such weapons “change nothing.”
Now the weapon system Ukraine has been begging for is the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which has a range of nearly 200 miles and would allow Kiev to attack key Russian supply routes in occupied southern Ukraine, greatly helping the campaign to to recapture the vital Black Sea port of Mariupol, where many thousands of Kremlin troops have gathered.
Still, Washington has so far refused to provide ATACMS. There are claims of availability issues, but it is clear that the main reason is concern over how Putin might react, in terms of ‘escalation’.
The same rationale applied to the delays on the part of the West, especially Germany, in giving a positive response to Ukraine’s long-standing request for tanks: there were fears that doing so would cross a line and even lead to nuclear retaliation by the Kremlin. .
But again, when the supposed red line was crossed, there was no “escalation” from Russia – just more hysterical threats of nuclear strikes against Berlin from the increasingly desperate-sounding pseudo-military shock jocks on the state broadcasters.
The fundamental point is this: if Western governments really want Ukraine to expel Russia from the sovereign Ukrainian territory it has seized since its invasion a little over a year ago, there is no point in denying Kiev the weapons that would bring about such a result. would yield. more likely – thereby helping to bring the Russians to the negotiating table in a position of greatest military backwardness.
BLUSTER
There are some cynics who say that Washington’s goal is to keep the war going as long as possible, and that it doesn’t really want Ukraine to ‘win’, just for the Russians not to emerge victorious.
But, both economically and militarily, it is not at all in the interest of the West for this war to continue for many years. Nor is it in our interest to increase the deterrent power of Putin’s nuclear blunder.
It is clear that it is not impossible that he uses a tactical nuclear weapon, if only demonstratively, in Ukraine. I’ve spoken to someone who has previously been deeply involved, at the highest level, in our own nuclear war games, and he thought it was quite possible that Putin would do such a thing.
But he added that he saw “no prospect of nuclear war as traditionally understood” — the specter that Vladimir Putin and his propagandists would have us fear he might unleash.
Incidentally, it is not Putin who can physically or autonomously ‘press the button’: such a decision is made via a chain of command. And even if a desperate Putin issued such an order, would his General Staff obey it?
Last week, much less publicized than Dmitry Muratov’s warning of nuclear war, came a very different analysis from Russia’s most celebrated author, Mikhail Shishkin, on the occasion of the publication of his book My Russia: War or Peace?
When asked by a Western interviewer if Putin would “go nuclear,” Shishkin replied that while he was confident the Russian president would be willing to “push the red button,” “no one will honor his order to destroy the Earth.” will perform’. No one. . . ‘
Shishkin continued, “Putin’s generals told him they would take Kiev in three days, and he miscalculated. He failed. And now he is a false tsar. No one will fulfill [such] an order from a false tsar.’